A handful of players from the 2010-11 season will certainly relish the opportunity Thursday night presents.

Joshua Boyd/Wicked Local Gloucester

A handful of players from the 2010-11 season will certainly relish the opportunity Thursday night presents.

That night, the Rockport-Ipswich-Manchester Essex co-op hockey team will face down tournament rival Wayland in a rematch of a 2011 game. Two years ago, Wayland eliminated Rockport, 5-1.

At 5:30 on Thursday at Stoneham Arena, a senior-heavy Rockport squad gets the chance to exact revenge against the Warriors.

“The guys are looking forward to the game. They’re relishing their underdog status,” said Rockport head coach Derek Papalegis.

The Vikings have been here before, in terms of pulling off a big upset. After losing to Marblehead in 2009 and 2010 by big goal differentials, the Vikings finally exorcised those demons by beat Marblehead, 2-0, last year.

Wayland (9-7-4, No. 7 seed) comes back to the state tournament hoping to repeat as North champions.

Rockport is enjoying a stretch of five straight tournament appearances, and the Vikings are a No. 10 seed (8-8-2). The Vikings went 7-0-1 in the Commonwealth Athletic Conference to win the CAC title outright this year, but that left a 1-8-1 non-league record.

Papalegis said the guys on the team are doing their best to erase that non-league record and be able to start from scratch.

“After our last game, I said that the regular season is done and there’s nothing we can do about it,” said Papalegis. “We did what we could. I would have liked to have seen our non-league schedule be better, but I put tough games on there on purpose.”

The only opponent both Wayland and Rockport played this year was Bedford, and the Vikings lost both their games to them, while Wayland had a win and a loss against the Buccaneers.

“The guys have seen some top teams, including a lot of Division 2 teams that are better than what we’ll see in the tournament,” Papalegis added.

The Vikings continued to work on fundamentals and execution throughout the week of practice, shying away from just recreating what they may have seen Wayland do on a tape.

“We need to show up and play our game,” said Papalegis.

A lot of the Vikings’ game has to do with the production of the Black Line (so-called due to the shirts the trio wears in practice) of Rockport’s Mike Tupper and Ipswich High students Alex Amoroso and Josh Guertin, the latter two of whom are actually Rowley residents.

“They are the go-to scoring line,” said Papalegis.

Besides the necessary scoring touch from the top trio, the Vikings have been working on a simpler game from the defensemen.

“We’ve found our defensemen do well when they keep it simple,” Papalegis said. “They get the puck in our zone and make a good breakout pass, rather than making that one extra pass or holding on to the puck too long. We need to focus on defense first, and the offense will come.”

It’s been a fairly easy week for Papalegis. The determination of a big senior class to have a statement year in the tournament has made it so he doesn’t have to do much, motivation-wise.

“I could tell that a lot of the guys are raring to go,” said Papalegis. “This is it. I didn’t have to say ‘You’ve got to show up to play your best game.’ The guys, with the seeding, are saying, ‘Hey we’ll be the underdog in every game we play.’”

It will all be decided on Thursday evening just how far these underdogs can go.